Thought some of you might be interested to know about the existence of this film: AA

Apparently it features pretty extensive Haino interviews and performances (among others (Otomo Yoshihide!)). With a 7.5 hour length I doubt if it will ever be translated / available on DVD, but oh well! Such is the life of a Haino fan.

Very quick (bad) translation of the synopsis:
Music critic Aida Akira (Aida Aquirax), who died at just 32 after leaving an indelible mark on the world of music, enthusistically introduced free jazz and progressive rock to Japan. Collaborating with other musicians Aida helped forge a new kind of Japanese music.
What movement was Aida's work of? What were the 1970s which Aida burst through? In this work director Aoyama Shinji, who is also known for his works as a producer and writer, created a six part long-running documentary spanning over 5 years. What will come of this seven and a half hour film by the director who rocked the world with his three & a half hour movie "Yuriika (Eureka)"? Deeply enthused by the time he was in middle school with the literary and philosophical music criticism he lived in the tracks of, this ambitious work brings Aida back to life through the words of musicians and critics who knew him.

Annnnnyhow, there's a trailer on the website featuring a short clip of Keiji Haino singing the most soul crushingly beautiful song I've ever heard him sing. http://www.aa-movie.com/trailer_mp4.html
Hurrah.

scott v: look at the last one, it's not the same reverb box, the second one doesn'r have a second jack on the right, whether the first one does (or at least that's what it says); perhaps it's an older version?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phlegmscope

I was about to post this to the dinosaur thread, but as we happen to have this thread too...

Third installment in the "Cosmic Debris" split ART-LP series set up by Maurizio and Roberto Opalio, aka My Cat Is An Alien, on their own Opax Records. The Vol.III sees the two space brothers from Torino, Italy, alongside Japanese cult musician and dark shaman Keiji Haino. Imagine a cosmic bomb exploding in your brain, and you'll have an approximate idea of this collaborative release. So, dear new-weird-america's hippy, you'd better keep your ass away from this total blast!.. no freak-folk here. Instead, with these two long tracks recorded during live performances in their hometowns, respectively Torino and Tokyo, MCIAA and Haino conspired to offer you the two most totally-uncompromising sides of vinyl, the best way to refresh your hot summer: what do you want more?

Haino's track, entitled "Whither goes it?/ That which canst not but be described/ As my prayer,/ Nowhere held in common,/ Lunatic, unknowable..." (yes, it's a poem!), is one of the highlights of his so long career, and MCIAA's track "Everything crashes like cosmic debris" is one of the brothers' most ass-kicking for sure... Still ask for more? Ok, read the note and play this record at loudest volume, 'till your stereo calls for mercy. Are you satisfied, now? Oh yes, we think so... 'dark' + 'alien' are so cool together!

Each record comes with an original acrylic painting by Roberto Opalio on 30x30cm proper canvas, with a unique Polaroid instant film installed on each piece, representing 100 different perspectives of a same subject related to My Cat Is An Alien's own cosmic imaginary.

I had a Haino afternoon the other day. Which was great for two reasons: first, I'm unemployed and can listen to records lots. Second, Haino's really, really good.

Also, I listened to Haino as I slept last night and my housemate complained that he couldn't sleep because he thought someone was being murdered. It was that one with the Steven O'Malley cover, odd-shaped black cardboard jobby. I'm sure it has a name, but I don't know what it is.

__________________
Message boards are the last vestige of the spent masturbator, still intent on wasting time in some neg-heroic fashion. Be damned all who sail here.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Savage Clone

Last time I was in Chicago I spent an hour in a Nazi submarine with a banjo player.

Also, I listened to Haino as I slept last night and my housemate complained that he couldn't sleep because he thought someone was being murdered. It was that one with the Steven O'Malley cover, odd-shaped black cardboard jobby. I'm sure it has a name, but I don't know what it is.

A temporary freezing of the time axis that turns at the end of this profound now

That, which while enfolding this now and present perfume, speaks, "I will use to the fullest this form bestowed upon me" and blurs the firmement - ah, where and in what form will it next be devised

Not new, per se, but the most recent Haino release on PSF (Yaranai ga dekinai ni natte yuku) is exquisite. Seems to me not many people noticed its release, which is a shame cause I think its one of Haino's very best solo discs. It has a pretty similar vibe and sound to 'Next lets try changing the shape' and 'First lets remove the colour', but oodles better.

Not new, per se, but the most recent Haino release on PSF (Yaranai ga dekinai ni natte yuku) is exquisite. Seems to me not many people noticed its release, which is a shame cause I think its one of Haino's very best solo discs. It has a pretty similar vibe and sound to 'Next lets try changing the shape' and 'First lets remove the colour', but oodles better.

No, not oodles. Just a little better - which makes it perfect.

agreed, best thing he put out in the last years. i was counting with your help, i know he's been busy playing everywhere, he was here alst december, so you too are not aware of any 2007 releases? there most be none then or not much.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Glice

On a related note, while Haino is easily one of my favourite artists, is there anyone with more ridiculous (and I mean that in the most positive sense possible) song titles?

ha yes, someone the translation from japanese to english dont make much sense

The main body of this interview was conducted on 29th July 1996, in a cafe near Haino's home in a suburb of Tokyo. Iced tea and cakes were the refreshments of choice. Also present was artist and "Taji" zine contributor Naomi "MU" Murakami. This was supplemented with segments from another interview, conducted on the 25th October 1994 at the Columbia Hotel in London, on Haino's first trip to the UK. His appearance there at the Disobey club was later documented on the "Saying I love you, I continue to curse myself" CD on Blast First.Alan Cummings : I’d like to ask you a bit about your childhood first. What were you like as a child?

Keiji Haino(1) : I was definitely different from everyone else. Looking back now it sort of seems to have been inevitable, but I was different from everyone else. My first memories are from around the time I went to kindergarten. It seems very symbolic now, but I remember that when all the other kids were playing in the sand pit, I’d be playing with building bricks. And when they were all playing with the building bricks, I’d be in the sand pit.

AC : So you always played by yourself?

KH : Yeah. But the thing was, the kindergarten I went to allowed me to do that(2). I don’t know whether it had a positive or a negative effect on me, but thinking back now, that kindergarten gave me preferential treatment. They let me do what I wanted. That system really suited me and I really liked kindergarten. I could do whatever I wanted. But when I went to elementary school I had a really hard time. Japanese schools are totally regimented–they’re always telling you to do this or do that. So coming straight from a kindergarten where they let me do whatever I wanted, looking back now and using modern terms, it was like experiencing culture shock. I probably never recovered from that. (laughs) I really hated school.

AC : When you were a child were you conscious of being different from everyone else?

KH : It wasn’t so much that I felt I was different from everyone else–just that what I liked to do always seemed to be different from what everyone else wanted to do.

AC : Did that make you feel lonely?

KH : I didn’t feel at all lonely at the start. I was doing what I wanted to. This doesn’t just apply to childhood, but you only begin to compare things when there is some restriction imposed upon you, don’t you? You should just do whatever you want, whatever feels good to you–and if you’re doing something that doesn’t feel right then you should be able to change direction. When restrictions exist, you’ve got to try and get past them. You’re being limited so you should change. And by doing that you begin to learn what doesn’t suit you, what isn’t natural.

AC : What are your earliest memories of music?

KH : I liked singing. I remember singing with my mother. I liked songs, rather than just some abstract idea of music.

AC : Did you hear a lot of music at home?

KH : Both my mother and father loved songs so . . . .

AC : What kind of songs?

KH : Just normal Japanese contemporary songs.

AC : Did they play any musical instruments? Or did that come later, at school?

KH : No, no, not at all. At primary school I loved music, but I absolutely loathed the music lessons we would be given. This is one of my really strong memories of school–when I’d just started primary school, you know how there’s a platform in front of the blackboard so the kids can reach the board? I remember that the teacher would always make me lie under that as a punishment, because I was always kicking up a fuss.

Naomi Murakami : That’s pretty extreme.

KH : Maybe it was only once or twice, but the memory of it is still really powerful. Because I had been so free in kindergarten, I’ve always hated being forced to do anything. I think I was probably born with that side to my character. I’m sure of that.

AC : What was the first instrument you learnt how to play?

KH : The harmonica(3)–I could really play it. I’m very confident on the harmonica–no matter what melody or rhythm, if I hear it just once, I can play it on the harmonica.

AC : Do you still use it in performance?

KH : Occasionally. Play me any folk song or symphony or whatever just once, and I’ll be able to blow it right back to you on harmonica.

AC : You play some harmonica on "Live in the First Year of Heisei," don’t you? When did you start learning it–did someone teach you?

KH : I learnt at school. I think it was in the fifth grade at elementary school. We started on harmonica and then moved up to the recorder. Later on, I had absolutely no interest in the guitar. All I ever imagined myself doing was singing.

AC : Did you have any kind of reaction against the type of music that you were being taught in school? Was there some part of you that was thinking, this isn’t really music?

KH : I liked singing, I liked playing instruments, but I hated class. It was that clear to me. This is something that a lot of people have remarked on–you know how you have music appreciation classes at school? The teacher asks how a particular piece of music sounds, what kinds of feelings it arouses, what the composer was thinking about–I always knew the answer before anyone else in the class.

AC : What age were you then?

KH : I was in the first grade.

AC : I think most people, for whatever reason, start taking a more active interest in music around puberty–you start investigating stuff for yourself, listening to new music. Did your attitude to music change around that time?

KH : I’ve talked about this a lot before. The Doors were the first big turning point for me. For some reason I had always wanted to do drama (4). So there I was in the second or third year of junior high school and I was very interested in theatre. Just around then rock, or "new rock" as they called it back then, became popular and I heard The Doors for the first time. It was like I had experienced something that had elements of both music and theatre, the two things that I was most interested in at that time.

AC : Were you attracted by that fusion of music and theatre?

KH : I suddenly realized that this was far cooler than straight theatre.

AC : Was that what made you want to become a musician? Rather than an actor?

KH : I liked The Doors and I liked what Jim Morrison was doing, so... I didn’t lose all interest in the theatre, but I just no longer felt like going that way.

AC : Did you hear any sense of musical progression from The Beatles to The Stones to The Doors, and then stuff after that like The Velvet Underground? Or did you just hear everything as pure music?

KH : That’s where I think I’m different from a lot of other people. I totally ignored all musical criticism–The Doors just gave me a real rush. Everyone is too aware of history and criticism when they listen to music and that’s why they don’t understand it properly. They read that someone is amazing, then they go out and buy that record–it turns into an academic exercise. I just liked The Doors without any outside influence. I had listened to a lot of stuff and they just really grabbed me. Stuff like Cream was totally tedious. I listened to Jimi Hendrix but I was more interested in the drums than his guitar. (laughs) Probably because I didn’t play guitar then I didn’t understand fully what he was doing. Music criticism gets in the way of feeling and understanding the music.

AC : Do you think then that it’s totally unnecessary?

KH : It’s OK to think about music after you’ve heard it. But first you’ve got to experience it. There’s no one who truly understands what Jimi Hendrix was doing. Most kids who get into Hendrix hear him as a progression from the blues. They don’t try to understand why he wrote those kinds of songs. So after they’ve listened to Hendrix for about ten years, they move on to better guitarists–people like Django (Rheinhardt) or Charlie Christian. But I think they’re entirely different. I’m not especially a fan of Hendrix though. I like Django and Charlie Christian–they did some amazing stuff.

AC : Did you hear any Velvet Underground stuff back then?

KH : The records were impossible to get hold of here at the time. If you weren’t living in the centre of Tokyo and involved in the art scene, then there was no way to get them. So I didn’t know anything about The Velvet Underground–none of the magazines did anything on them at the time. At least if any of them did, I never saw it. Just one more example of how idiotic Japanese rock critics and magazines are. (laughs)

KH : None at all. All there was was "group sounds" stuff. You know, Japanese versions of ‘60s pop–"I love you" and that kind of thing. Once I’d heard The Doors I lost all interest in that kind of pop–especially in the way it was presented. All these people flopping their fringes around–like, give me a break. (laughs) I’ve changed a bit now, but twenty years ago I never had any intention of playing music and making money that way. I just loved music and wanted to play live. Now there are a lot of young musicians who want to become stars from even before they start making music. That’s ridiculous. There’s no way you can make interesting music if that’s all you’re concerned about. Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison never started out with that intention, it was something that happened along the way. At the start I wanted to be an actor rather than a musician anyway.

AC : What was the first time you performed as a musician?

KH : At my high-school festival(5) maybe. I was in a cover band. We played stuff by The Stones, The Beatles, umm what else? By the time I was in high-school I was already listening to psychedelic music–in Japan, it was known as "art rock" though. I was aware of Cream, Jimi Hendrix and all of that scene, but the other people in the band weren't maniac record collectors and all they knew were The Stones and The Beatles. So I just went along with what they knew... Then I dropped out of high-school half way through my sophomore year.(6)

AC : What was it about music specifically, as opposed to theatre or art, say, that attracted you so much?

KH : I think it must have been the idea of singing songs. I'd loved singing from when I was very young, so it was like I could do that, and I could do something theatrical, and on top of that there was some sort of a message in it too. The difference between me and everyone else back then in the sixties–it wasn't like this when I was in junior high, but by the time I was around seventeen and was in high school I hated communication with a vengeance. Especially because at that time everyone was flashing peace signs and all of that. There wasn't so much of it in Japan, but in the rest of the world everyone was singing songs about peace–I loathed it all. So I wanted to make music that was different from that. This all came together around the time I left high school, and The Doors just fit my ideas exactly. What I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it was totally different from The Beatles and their ilk. All this stuff links up if you think about it. Like what people always say about Jim Morrison and the stuff that happened in Miami: how he'd seen a theatre group who'd been directly influenced by Artaud and it had blown his mind. Of course, I wasn't reading Artaud back in junior high. I got into him later and then I found out that Jim Morrison liked his ideas, too. We were both inspired by the same sort of people. I don't like to use the word "influenced," but if I think back now, Jim Morrison possibly had an effect on me far beyond any ideas of influence. Maybe it's like that scene in the movie where Jim Morrison sees the Indian and absorbs him–maybe Jim Morrison entered into me.

AC : Like a spirit-guide, or whatever.

KH : Yeah, possibly. But still there are certain pitiful aspects of what he did that I want to stay away from, drugs, etc.

AC : Were you aware of Albert Ayler when you were playing with Lost Aaraaff?

KH : He exists in my memory, but I'm never conscious of him. I mean, I don't compare what I do with what he did. All I'm aware of is that he took the music to a certain point, but no further. I was thinking about this earlier–and I'm old enough now to start making sweeping statements. There are all these people–The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Ayler–people that I like. They've all possessed parts of the essence of expression. If you imagine the essence of expression as a huge object, then Jim Morrison and so on are all just a minuscule part of that. They didn't have enough–all they had was maybe one thousandth of the whole. Albeit that's a lot better than most musicians who don't even have that. I think that I can possibly become the sum of all those bits. Ten or twenty years ago, the power and effectiveness of my performances were very slight, but I have managed to really increase that through training. If the essence of expression actually exists, then I am an amalgamation of all those separate essences. Though I think that probably this essence of expression doesn't actually exist. For example, Artaud dismembered words to take them back to the basic sounds. In that sense, the bits I liked of them all still exist within me. I never feel like I no longer need Jimi Hendrix or Jim Morrison. I still listen to Blue Cheer once every few years. I still like all the things I once liked. That said, there are many parts of them I hate.

AC : Have you completely absorbed them?

KH : There is no such thing as completely. If the whole is one thousand, then I only want to get as far as nine hundred and ninety-nine. If there is anyone who comes after me, then they can begin from where I left off. I would like there to be more musicians like me–I'd like to meet them. The person I'd most like to play with at the moment is a certain Iranian musician, a guy who plays the tár(7). I'm not interested in the politics or system, not in any discriminatory sense–I'm interested in individuals.
What I want to know is why are there no proper musicians now? Or is it because I've worked so hard that everyone else appears so weak? Whatever–it's very boring for me. The reason why I still listen to so much music is because I want to discover someone who is better than me. I want to find someone who can tell me that what I'm doing isn't that great. Human beings need that kind of competitive stimulus to keep on going further. When I pick up a new instrument I get a real rush of power as I try to work out how to play it.

AC : Is what you are trying to communicate through music also communicable through different arts–for example, painting, or theatre, or dance?

KH : At the start I had no interest in other genres, but as I have thoroughly explored music I've found that other genres have possibly begun to be relevant to what I'm doing. As an example, Artaud thoroughly investigated words and in the end it lead him to a relationship with sound. It's close to that, I think. Through doing music, I've come to painting.

AC : Is that a recent thing?

KH : In terms of painting for other people to see, yes. Just since last year.

AC : What about dance?

KH : For me, everything comes back to sound. Everything comes from sound. Sound can be expressed in terms of colour, in terms of the relationship between people, or the relationship between your limbs.

AC : Why are you so interested in singing? You talked about being impressed originally with the power of rock, but to me songs seem to have much less of an immediate impact–less power, more of a sense of beauty in the construction or delivery.

KH : I sing because I want a sense of becoming one with someone outside of myself. I don't like using the word "message," but what I want is that feeling of union. Back when I was doing Lost Aaraaff I had absolutely no interest in that. I didn't want any points of contact with people, to become one with them. It was like I would just explode by myself, and if people wanted to get close to that then that was their problem. That element still exists inside me somewhere. But over the years I have studied different methods of presentation–whether I should explode suddenly, or gently draw people in. I don't like words like "balance" or "control" as they imply that something is contrived–I would prefer to say that I constantly choose the most effective method of presentation while I'm performing. I don't think about what I'm going to do the day before. I respond to the internal vibrations of each sound as it appears, and decide which type of sound will follow it most effectively. I construct the sounds one by one.